Artemis II Flies Past the Moon, Breaks Distance Record, and Is Already Headed Home — With a Still-Broken Toilet

NASA's Artemis II mission blasted off April 1, 2026 at 9:17 a.m. EDT, ending a 53-year human absence from lunar space that began when Apollo 17 splashed down in 1972. The four-person crew flew within 6,400 miles of the lunar far side on April 6, broke the record for farthest humans from Earth, and is now on the three-day sprint home. What was theoretical yesterday is already a 230,000-mile memory.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen have already seen the dark side of the Moon. Koch and Glover became the first woman and first person of color to visit lunar space. Their spacecraft slipped past the Moon’s south pole Monday, stress-testing life support and manual flight modes in ways impossible on Earth.

The mission was originally scheduled for late 2025 but slipped repeatedly due to battery issues with Orion’s life support and heat-shield charring worries from Artemis I. NASA sanded down the schedule after engineers found unexpected charring. Those fixes have now endured the full lunar loop and are facing re-entry Monday.

After the eight-minute translunar injection burn, the crew looped the Moon at 24,500 mph. Wiseman and Glover ran manual pilot drills while Koch logged radiation data and Hansen tended Canadian payloads. They are now 248,000 miles from Earth, closing the gap at roughly 25,000 mph with splashdown targeted for April 10. The busted waste line still vents odor through the cabin, so the crew is rationing liquids and using backup bags.

Artemis II has already flown farther from Earth than any humans before—about 270,000 miles at lunar pass. The previous mark was Apollo 13’s 248,655 miles in 1970. The crew will ride a high-speed re-entry at 25,000 mph when they hit Earth’s atmosphere Monday morning.